Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Students are creating a postcard on one of the seven wonders of the ancient world that is due Friday. Here are some websites to help with this assignment:

National Geographic Kids

Mr. Donn (Mr. Donn has many resources for social studies and science)

Kids Gen

Can't wait to see the creativity and interesting information on Friday!

Mesopotamia Bulletin Board

Bulletin board from class focusing on Mesopotamia and the five essential statements / questions.

               Government and Law

                       Geography

Who affects who?

Comparing civilizations and social classes

Writing a Bibliography

Anytime a research paper is written a bibliography or works cited page should be included. This page should be the last page, should be titled either Bibliography or Works Cited and should include all the resources that were used to create the research paper in alphabetical order.

The easiest way to create a bibliography is to follow an example. A quick Google search on creating a bibliography using MLA style will provide many examples of how a bibliography is created. The students also received a packet of information on how to cite sources and how to create a bibliography. A copy of that document can be found here: MLA Document Sources

Another way to complete the bibliography is to find an online bibliography creator. One example is citationmachine.net. Another example is  http://education.bluevalleyk12.org/KidBib/. These websites allow a person to put in the information in blanks and then the website will complete the entry. Please note that these entries will then need to be copied and pasted into a word document once they are created since they only create one at a time.

Here is a copy of the rubric for the research paper that the students received last week Science Fair Research Report Rubric

Mesopotamia

Students have been learning about Mesopotamia for the last week. Here are some interesting websites on Mesopotamia.

Mr. Donn's history page on Mesopotamia  Mr. Donn offers websites on many different civilizations and has a tremendous amount of information on many topics. Some of the links are power points, games, and interesting readings.

National Geographic For Kids - Includes an interesting video on Mesopotamia

Ducksters History of Mesopotamia - A lot of interesting information on different parts of Mesopotamia

Kids Newsroom on Mesopotamia - Shorter entries on different topics of Mesopotamia

Color Lab: Graduated Cylinder Practice

We used the concept of mixing primary colors to practice reading graduated cylinders. Here are some pictures: 

Trying to create the color of Sperry's 

Recreating the rainbow

Science Tools

There are many important tools that scientists use to measure data. This week students have been working with triple beam balances, graduated cylinders, and rulers. Here are some websites to practice reading and using triple beam balances and graduated cylinders.

Triple Beam Balance Website

Graduated Cylinder Practice

Different Types of Measurement Practice

Here are some pictures from our lab we did this week on growing gummy bears and worms. Some of the vocabulary words and concepts we discussed during this lab were:

length
width
height / depth
volume
mass density

Before and After

 Before and After

 

 

Where is the gummy bear? 

 

5 Themes of Geography

The five themes of geography were created to help study the world and its history. The five themes are:

Location
Place
Human Environmental Interaction
Movement
Region

There will be a quiz on Wednesday on the five themes. The students have a study guide to follow and notes in their spiral notebook as well. Here are a few more resources that may help.

5 Themes Rap:



5 Themes Video with Students:

5 Themes Quiz:


Flash Card Help - This link will take you to online flash cards on the five themes of geography.

 

Writing a Hypothesis

In our study on the scientific method, we have been identifying variables and focusing on making every experiment a "fair test" by only changing one variable at a time. Another piece of this puzzle is to figure out how to write a hypothesis.

A hypothesis is an educated guess and can be written several ways. One way is to write "I think" statements and make a prediction of what will happen that can be tested and measured. One example would be, "I think boat design number two will hold the most washers." You can also make this hypothesis stronger by adding a reason. "I think boat design number two will hold the most washers because it has a wide base."

Another way to write a hypothesis that we are learning this year is to write an if / then statement. If (I do this), then (this will happen). This also helps students to identify the variables because the independent variable is the if and the dependent variable is the then. If (independent variable), then (dependent variable). Example with the independent variable in yellow and the dependent variable in green.

"If I design a boat to hold the most amount of washers, then a boat with a wide base will hold more washers than a boat with a narrow base." 

You can also add a reason to this as well.

"If I design a boat to hold the most amount of washers, then a boat with a wide base will hold more washers than a boat with a narrow base because the wider base will distribute the weight evenly throughout the boat."  

Sciencebuddies.org has a helpful description on this topic. Be sure to click on the tabs to look at the explanation and samples.

Scientific Method

Our focus last week and this week, will be on the scientific method. The scientific method may be written or explained many different ways, but we will focus on seven steps.

Problem / Purpose / Question
Research
Hypothesis
Controlled Experiment
Analyze Results
Conclusion
Possible Errors

In order to help us discover the scientific method last week, the students completed a lab on buoyancy. Here is a short video with some of their designs.

*** Important post in the middle of this week. Focus - Variables!

Boat Building Day

Here is a video related to our activity in class. Come to class tomorrow ready to change or modify your design from today. We will see who's design can hold the most washers without tipping or sinking. Remember the scientific method is all about problem solving and critical thinking.